Arcsight Enterprise Security Manager vs. Splunk Enterprise

In the current lot of hundreds of SIEM solutions out there in the market, ArcSight ESM is fairly less expensive with strong fundamentals in place. The log ingestion, correlation are very well performing and totally worth ROI. However, the tool has lost its way when it comes to staying abreast with current feature curve of SIEM technology and the evolution has not been done by MicroFocus. Search times are high and there is no major plug-in that has been introduced as part of the product life cycle.

Incentivized

Pros: Splunk is very well suited if you have multiple log sources of related data. All of them can be correlated and tasks can be automated based on the requirement. Other than alerts, Splunk can also run a specific script of your choice, based on some defined conditions. Cons: If you have a few logs but a large number of log sources, Splunk can be very expensive.

Incentivized

• Integration with smart logger and ESM to create rules and easy management of the same.
• Easy integration with all end point security management tool(IPS/IDS, Firewall, Anti-Virus) and their consolidated output at a single place to effectively rectifying true and false positives.

Incentivized

• Real-time + Scheduled alerts - i-e you can set up alerts which are actively monitoring your logs
• Pretty good response time for search results. With our key/value logging, Splunk makes it blazing fast to query the data.
• Dashboards provide insights into historical data
• Love how Splunk indexes all of the data and provides keys to search on

Incentivized

• Even though integration is good but not complete yet as there are a lot of new popular apps which Arcsight can't integrate with natively.
• UI can be improved.

Incentivized

• At times some queries can run slowly if indices are not on a portion of the query you use.
• Setup time initially can be difficult if your logs aren't stored in common locations or in a common way to write the log.
• Ability to ingest logs from different locations without having to change code to put logs in a certain place (pro and con).
• Searches can be a bit more difficult to look through if your log isn't pulled in a manner that is easy to read through splunk.

Incentivized

We are using Splunk extensively in our projects and we have recently upgraded to Splunk version 6.0 which is quite efficient and giving expected results. We keep track of updates and new features Splunk introduces periodically and try to introduce those features in our day to day activities for improvement in our reporting system and other tasks.

Overall, it is a good investment in order for an organization to stay compliant and stay secure from all the wild things happening. It is definitely a cost effective tool with some good features including correlation, log storage, reporting and dashboards. If a customer is looking for advanced set of features, then I would highly not recommend this.

Incentivized

You can literally throw in a single word into Splunk and it will pull back all instances of that word across all of your logs for the time span you select (provided you have permission to see that data). We have several users who have taken a few of the free courses from Splunk that are able to pull data out of it everyday with little help at all.

Incentivized

When properly setup and configured, Splunk is extremely reliable.

Incentivized

I personally haven't reached the support team, however, the engineers never complained about the Arcsight support team. We had some issues with the tool in the past but every time we reached the support, all issues were resolved in a timely manner.

Incentivized

Splunk maintains a well resourced support system that has been consistent since we purchased the product. They help out in a timely manner and provide expert level information as needed. We typically open cases online and communicate when possible via e-mail and are able to resolve most issues with that method.

Incentivized

Smooth without too many major issues.

Incentivized

Multiple platforms are already supported by Arcsight. Support is good. Scripts can be used to get data from multiple threat intel sources & the same can be used in correlation rules to detect any suspicious activity. Reporting features are good & you can check any backdated information within new clicks.

Incentivized

I wanted to learn a new language that I can quickly master and implement. Splunk is easy, fun to use and best of all, it can be developed in hours not days or weeks. Splunk is fundamentally a programming language that is minimal but yet powerful enough to collect, analyze and visualize data.

Incentivized

Splunk can scale in to the petabyte per day range which of course is awesome

• It helps us a lot which managing security event and incidents.
• It is also very useful to have a dashboard for an quick overview and scheduled reports for timely checks of all activities.
• It requires more space and search management to be one of the favorites on the market.

Incentivized

• Overall very positive. It has provided visibility to what is going on within our network.
• One drawback is the time it takes to get up to speed with the application, but this is up to the user, and Splunk education is excellent.
• In my field, IT Security, there are few other friends to have in your back pocket better than Splunk. They are just that good.

Incentivized